Desktop platform 10K downloads?

We experienced the same thing on 10/15. Normally we have about 30 sales a day but there was a spike to 1,000 in desktop sales on 10/15. There was no corresponding spike in App Analytics store views or on our website or social media.

Anyone have any ideas as to why that might occur?

We experienced the same thing, also on 10/15. Huge spike in "Desktop sales" on 10/15, no corresponding spike in other analytics views or evidence as to why this could have happened.

Looking forward to hearing if others experienced this and/or what Apple's response is, because it impacts our internal reporting.

had same thing yesterday 11/25. had 3,000 for desktop, only 4 normally. contacted Apple but no response.

I had the same thing on Aug 24th: over 11,000 downloads in a single day, up from an average of about 20. I ended up calling iTunes Connect support twice, and both times they insisted that there was no problem with their reporting. Any fool can see that there's an anomaly in the stats, but they seem set on blowing me off. :/

Same thing here. Over the past few months I've had it happen 3 or 4 times. Usually between 2k and 5k downloads. Since my app (Box Drop Math) is an educational game, I assumed that these numbers reflected downloads through Apple's Volume Purchase Program - but I'm not sure.

Are these free downloads or paid? I'd be really happy if I had 10,000 downloads in a single day (especially paid). Did your app rankings shoot up too? I'd imagine with that many downloads in a single day you should have jumped up pretty high in the rankings.

I'm assuming you are talking about an iOS app (not Mac?). It seems pretty strange, most people don't shop for iOS apps on the Desktop in iTunes.

For my Apps the App Store Views take from App Analylics is on the 50 - 150 range but on the Sales and Trends and over the same period downloaded units are in the range 1k to 25k. This happens when I make App free the vast majority of the downloads 99.9% are from desktops. The data doesn't correlate. Normal user behaviour is to view the page and then download. I suspicious that some bot is initiating downloads and skewing the stats.

Some educational institutions may be downloading blocks of 100's or 1000's using their educational purchase plan account, possibly for future use in the next school year, and/or for their entire student body. For free apps, these blocks might never show up in the usage analytics. e.g. they're warehoused like unused school books in the district book depository.

Happened to us today. Normally 400-500 downloads a day, all on iPhone and iPad. Today four times as many, all on desktop in US/Canada. Sometimes we know to expect these spikes, for example when we got reviewed in Cult of Mac or Macworld. But no such thing today. Weird. I expect it'll be back to normal tomorrow.

This happened to our free iOS app on June 21 & June 23 (2016).

We normally have between 100-150 a day, but on the 21st we had 10,146! Then we had 3,120 on the 23rd.

The spikes were all on desktop in US/Canada.

Very peculiar!

I'm experiencing the same 'problem'. I have a non-english (free) educational app, which on Okt. 26 had 2.1k downloads, where I normally would have 1-5 downloads each day. All from the USA as iPhone downloads (not as desktop downloads).

I'm pretty sure this is not correct, but am looking for a more definitive answer. Maybe some bot is downloading the app? Or could it perhaps be that an (educational) institue by accident bulk bought this app (seeing the fact that the downloads are from the USA and the app not being in english). The latter seems unlikely to me.

P.S. this person seems to have the same 'problem' (or he/she actually has a really popular app) https://www.quora.com/I-made-one-of-my-games-free-and-suddenly-had-a-large-spurt-in-app-downloads-on-the-iTunes-iOS-app-store-What-should-I-do

For sure unusual high spikes in downloads is the Volume Purchase Program for Education.

You can confirm it by downloading your report for the given day, open it with Excel (or anyspreadsheet program) and you'll find EDU in the Promo Code column on the line with a high Units number.

These unfortunately doesn't reflect real downloads on your app.

ps: if it helps, you can download Dino Rush to give us some real downloads 🙂

Hi guys,

we had the same thing happening to us, apparently these are the apps purchased through Volume Purchase Program for institiutions.

Is there a way to find out which institution made the purchase?

Thanks 🙂

In our case, we have got 15.000 downloads on 26th of December, and 32.500 downloads for two apps on 29th of December

Total 80.000 downloads from China, 3 different apps, iPhone device, NO analytics sessions increases

I look at the report and this downloads are not marked as EDU

What is your opnion?

Thanks

Don

Same here, the last couple of days we have reports of 100k downloads over several free apps all from China. In the report they are not marked with 'EDU' but they are definitely not real since we did not move up in the Chinese charts and see no additional user activity on our servers. We contacted them and they 'blamed' it on the Volume Purchase Program.

This isn't something nefarious or suspicious, nor is it a bot. It is the Volume Purchase Program, either for educational institutions, or for large enterprises. The way these institutions distribute apps to staff internally is via some form of Mobile Device Management system. There are apps they have to distribute to staff/students whatever, and these are purchased in a way that shows up as a desktop purchase in the stats. This kinda makes sense as the person purchasing your app is most likely sat at a desktop computer putting the order through the system. Unlike a user purchasing and downloading your app, this is like a 'right to download' so many copies of your app, and not actual downloads. Looking through your analytics, you will see this to be the case.

Now, someone within an institution may have requested your app be made available over their system, maybe even just for a team/class of 10 or 20. However, for the person administering this system, if the app is free, it costs them the same amount in terms of their time to put an order in for 20,000 as it does for 20. Theoretically someone else could come along later and ask for another 30 copies. What are they to do? Waste time, putting in exact orders for the requested amount each time a request comes in, or block booking for the maximum they are ever likely to need and never having to repeat the action? You guessed it, they block order more than they will ever need.

This is annoying from a stats point of view, but there's really nothing you can do. X licenses have been requested for your app, but they are not obliged to use all of them. All you can really do is be aware that this is a 'thing', and maybe strip desktop purchases out of your stats (or at least strip out these huge one off purchases that are normally for a suspiciously round number). Very few normal end users make desktop purchases through the iTunes app these days. Certainly in my own reports, they normally just look like noise.

One other thing. If you have a paid app and put it free for a few days, I've found that some institutions seem to take these as opportunities to bulk purchase an app "in case" it might be useful for that organisation in the future. I've seen that the last few times I've done this. The first time it happened it nearly put me in a panic, along the lines of "if only I'd waited, maybe I'd have had 20,000 paid sales! 😮". It's important to remember that these are rarely "real" sales, quite often they're opportunistic, and wouldn't have happened if it hadn't have been for the free sale. In my book, running a free sale of a paid app for a few days is like the best form of publicity available - you get massive coverage for no outlay, just a few weeks of elevated support levels afterwards. And quite often there's a day or two of elevated sales after going back to paid which quite often covers the normal "lost" revenue. You just have to be aware that some purchasers for institutions are actively watching the "gone free" lists and taking advantage of them to get quality apps in bulk on the cheap.

Oh no, contrary to that spiel I've posted above, which in normal circumstances I'd contend still stands, I have about an excess 12K free downloads yesterday from China. The raw report has only just become available, and it does seem to show this as 12K iPhone downloads, NOT desktop, and without any promo code hinting at EDU, nor with an expected jump in installs which you'd expect to see for real iPhone purchases. Which goes counter to everything I've experienced previously.

So... either Apple have messed up their reporting (always a possibility), or there really is some nefarious bot network in China downloading multiple copies of apps for no good reason whatsoever...

Anyone else? 🙂

That's exactly.

On January 2, I had 140,000 downloads from China for a game that is not even aimed at children and educational (though it is available for Volume Purchase Program)

I happened, in the past, to have downloads for Volume Purchase Program, and these downloads were marked as EDU and came from Desktop (On Appannie are marked as promo)

The donwloads came last week from China, apart from not being marked as EDU, come from iPhone (NO Desktop)

I'll try to ask Apple Support again

Among the various hypotheses, even I thought the factories where they produce the iPhone, to test it.

Or, of course, an actions to damage Apple and developers.

Or a bug in the system of statistics.

The same thing happened to my free iOS app, where there was a +10K bump from US app store.

Normally, I get 400 DLs from US store per day.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1_TPpMUUAAQvsS.jpg

We experienced the same thing - apprx 20k downloads on iPhone on Jan 8th - no apparent reason why, all China.

Would be interested in hearing an official answer if anyone comes across it.

Boone

.Bram downloads from the US could be "Volume Purchase Program".

You have to control the text report and see if they are marked as EDU (or check Device filter if they come from Desktop)

Consider that our apps (several free apps), in the last 20 days has been downloaded about 400K times from China (no EDU, no Desktop)

While usually, for 20 days, we were on 30K

Apple responded that the downloads are regular and can not give more informations about costumers.

In the apps analysis page of iTunes Connect, there are no "product views" as the number of downloads.

No increase in revenue and even sessions.

So this are not real donwloads

Maybe they just want to alter the conversions data, at least this is the first visible effect

I am seeing this as well with my app, though not the volumes others are reporting. Seems odd they can download the app without visiting the apps AppStore page.

Same and same comments from apple. The reporting system is working just fine. But uh... the reporting system is reporting fake downloads. Apple can provide no further comment. Whatever.

I am seeing this across *all* of my free apps.

300+ downloads a day all from China.

Been going on almost two months now. Solid.

Annoying!

Same here! Normally ~4 downloads per day of my free app, but the last 2 months ~60 per day, all from China.

Weird. And why? Are they trying to kill Apple's bandwidth by doing massive botnet downloads? 😝